<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Ghost Essays by Red (Red_Balloons)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927434">Ghost Essays</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Balloons/pseuds/Red'>Red (Red_Balloons)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kingdom Come [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danny Phantom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Essays, Ghost Lair Headcanons, Ghost Zone Headcanons, Ghosts, Historical References, Mythology References, Post-Canon, Psuedoscience, References to Canon, References to Norse Religion &amp; Lore, Unknown Writer, parascience</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:28:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Balloons/pseuds/Red</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation of 'ghost essays' written to world-build outside of actual storytelling.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kingdom Come [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174058</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ghost Essays</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>These are post-canon essays written by a character from the show. The writer will be known eventually, as this is part of said character's development.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Do take care to remember as you read: This is chronologically the first essay written in canon of this series. It's meant to be a mess. Upcoming essays will also be a mess, but hopefully they'll eventually get cleaner as the character learns how to write essays that get published.</p><p>Because of how messy this essay is, I will write an "edited" version that cleans it up. But the info here is canon to the series.</p><p>This chapter goes over several different religious beliefs in terms of the Afterlife. I tried to be respectful towards them all while also trying to fit them in with what we know canonically to the show.</p><p>If there are any aspects wrong, please politely point them out and how I should correct them in the comments.</p><p>I am, sadly, not religious and am trying to give every involved religion in this essay (and in possible future ones) an unbiased tone. If I come off as biased towards any of them, please take it with a grain of salt - either I don't mean it the way it came off and can edit the line(s) that seem rude or it was written that way purposefully to give the piece the tone of the character who, story-wise, wrote them. Please keep that in mind: <em>Nothing about these essays are of my own beliefs and as the one writing them, I'm trying to be respectful while also writing as one of the characters from the main story would.</em></p><p>The character's experience and beliefs are being voiced in these essays. Not my own. If someone points out something and I don't change it, that is because the character wouldn't have considered it, worded it differently, or thought to add it in. Thank you for being respectful of that creative choice.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is the belief that life does not end after death that paranormal investigations hold ground; like previous facts of today, curiosity and perseverance of study is the only reason parascience has withstood the span of time. Parascience is the study of subjects that are outside the range of, or phenomena that are not recognized to exist combing two words as one word used from 'paranormal' and 'science', the social sciences because their occurrence is not established and cannot be explained by accepted scientific theory, or because it cannot be tested by conventional scientific methods. In more specific terms, parascience covers "non-scientific practices that are not pseudoscientific" like history, philosophy, art, and religion.</p><p>Parascience, as a whole, is a complicated field of study because of the slew of decades without conventional scientific evidence to prove that some of the subjects involved exist. Historically speaking, parascience does not have a consistent presence within the intellectual fields of study - colleges that might have once agreed to have a course or two on it have, at one point or another, dropped them again due to the "drain upon resources" that was deemed unnecessary. Though that doesn't give credit to those who pursued the field on their own dime outside of a campus setting - these people tend to be given the moniker of 'Paranormal Enthusiast' by the larger portion of the global population that do not believe ghosts exist. Those who do not have a parascience credit upon their college record do tend to be the common number compared to the small few who do and it has, in years past, done more damage than aid for the field.</p><p>"Paranormal Enthusiasts," a study on those who believed in ghosts in 2000 concluded, "is mostly seen as an insult to the community, as it was created to undermine the lengths most have gone through to gather what knowledge they do have on the paranormal." 89% of those within the study agreed that they preferred to be called 'parascienstists' instead, with 8% preferring to stick with 'paranormal investigators'. The final 3% found no issues with the rejected term. Another study from 2009, in comparison, was done upon a wider range of people - involving those who believed in ghosts, those who believed in an afterlife, and those who believed in neither - and the disagreement for the term 'Paranormal Enthusiasts' was more evenly split with 48% finding no issues with it and 52% agreeing it seemed insulting with a further split among them on what the group she be called instead.</p><p>The reason both studies give behind the split acceptance of the term comes from the general mockery that had been made of the field. The conduct of the second study was put forth as an educational endeavor meant to give proof to the unaware (and collect data on how much those who did believe knew collectively and what seemed niche). The started ratio of believers-to-nonbelievers had been relatively distanced with 62% documented nonbelievers; in the end, that percentage was lowered to 44%. (The evidence used has since been given concrete proof with the emergence of ghosts in Amity Park, Minnesota, giving credence behind the shift in nonbelievers of the time.)</p><p>Though many do not agree that the Afterlife - in this sense, the existence after death - is the realm of Ghosts, apparitions or echoes of people long dead, this practice has gained popularity in the aftermath of the Phantom Planet (a title given the a would-be world-destroying event that outed the existence of ghosts to the whole world). The idea that Death is not final is where the revival of the field comes from; nobody, after all, wishes to stop existing, especially after dying. The uptick of involvement in the study of parascience can be credited to the younger demographic, with majority of the field consisting of 12% adults of the age range 50-65, adults ranging between 30-49 retaining 20%, and those 18-29 holding 58%. The last 30% are those still considered "studying" or of the 18-and-younger demographic.</p><p>Due to the younger minds involved with the current numbers within the parascience field - specifically the philosophers and religious topics - there have been a compilation of all variations of how the Afterlife looked and worked. The multiple depictions have one thing in common: There is a place for the 'good' (or well-behaved) people, a place for the 'bad' (or the corrupt) people, and then there is a sort of 'limbo', where the people who could be described as "having walked the middle road between good and evil". The names of each place are different throughout the many religions - Heaven, Hell and Purgatory; Isle of the Blessed, Tartarus and the Fields of Punishment; Valhalla, Fólkvangr, and Náströnd - to some capacity or another. The main aspect of all is that there are multiple paths to take, religiously, to send someone to a specific Afterlife.</p><p>The belief of such pathways is what many misunderstand when it comes to the Ghost Zone - the world in which the Dead and Deadless live - and its composition. The Ghost Zone is a term used by the Living, but the very realm in question is more commonly called the Infinite Realms by the ghosts. Being infinite means there is no actual limitation to what can form within when it comes to the setting of the Ghost zone. Consider the realm being similar to an archipelago of islands: you have the islands themselves, which are specifically places that fit with the religious beliefs mentioned above, and then there is the 'ocean', which would be where those unconnected would live (like the Deadless, who are beings created through imagination like Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, the Toothfairy, the Sandman, etc.). As a place without boundary, none of the ghosts, spirits, figures, etc. has to interact with one another if they don't wish to.</p><p>With the multitude of cultures, the social overlap is cause for more confusion geography. Each ghost, essentially, has their own "island" that is called a Haunt or Lair; it is a place specific to the individual that lives there. In terms of Christianity, the Haunt of Jesus is within the boarders of God's Lair while also being different to the Haunt of the Devil or the Lair of Moses. Conversely, the Haunt of the Devil is more complex in terms of what's within due to Satanism that if could be considered it's own Haunt separate to that of God's if the main figure - Satan, in this case - wishes to, essentially, abdicate. (Studies involved with the two groups in question are currently being made on how the two Lairs, God's and Satan's, co-habit the same area of the Infinite REalms. Basic surveys from 2001 say that approximately 72% of the population within God's Haunt and approximately 76% of Satan's do not care about the placement of Satan's Lair. Surveys among the Living, from 2002, show that the majority of Christians don't like the idea of 'living near' Satan and his 'sinners' while majority of Satanists do not care and "also find it rather funny that, if they were given free reign, they could enter God's realm relatively easily despite not believing in him.")</p><p>The study of parascience has, since its initial conception, grown to be equally ingrained in life in the years since 2009. People are shifting their beliefs to keep up (while others are, admittedly, trying to keep to what they had been before Phantom Planet) and it is showing in the outpouring of interest in studying the field among the younger generations. There are plans for doing another study on where the ratio of believers-and-nonbelievers stand now that the Ghost Zone is a widely known fact. And with all the changes happening, the understanding of how the Ghost Zone works is predicted to be the most complicated part of the field due to the realm having its own social makeup and economy.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Outside of definitions to terms, all information within the essays are fictional. The decision to not reference resources I've used is based on the canonical timeline - <em>Danny Phantom</em> takes place in the early 2000s, which was when very little was scientifically accepted in terms of ghosts. (Most used sources will be Wikipedia and two books written by Judika Illes, specifically the two that go over spirits and spells.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>